Sometimes adventures take a strange turn and, when they do, they etch themselves firmly in your memories—including the colours. Paul Glover takes us on a trip down the Nass, and the proverbial memory lane.

We asked six writers and one photographer (Michelle Yarham) to tackle this issue’s theme in whatever way they saw fit. What they came up with is quirky, funny, poignant, reflective, and uniquely northern.

Every year, volunteers from across the province save lives, plucking the lost from the backcountry. Contributing editor Amanda Follett Hosgood talks to search-and-rescue groups to gain some insight into the complexities and challenges facing SAR organizations in northern BC.

Whatever we create, the environment we are in leaves an imprint on our work. Many artists crave isolation during the creative process, but some encourage outsiders to interrupt and even influence the direction of the pieces. Six northern BC artists discuss their creative spaces and what makes them so significant to the work they produce.

Yawning and leg stretching at the visitor centre. The city connects highways and breaks up a train route, but the distances are vast. Some travellers collect brochures and pile them in their car doors. Others invest in small mementos: a printed mug or a wooden Mr. PG. A few leave behind their stories.

Tatshenshini-Alsek Park is iconic Canadian wilderness. It’s rugged, remote, and truly remarkable. Perched on a confluence of borders—BC, Yukon, and Alaska—the park is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest protected natural area in the world.

The beginning of a thing is often not recognized as such until long after, or indeed until an ending appears on the horizon. Such was the case in the fall of 1994, when four dirtbags pooled their limited resources and headed north from Vancouver and the Kootenays to undertake a month-long sea-kayak trip in Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve.

In Haida Gwaii, the dark months of winter mean more time for things like hunting trips. Join photographer Joseph Crawford as he explores abandoned buildings and the subdued coastal landscapes while on a boat-access hunting excursion.

Travelling in northern BC’s backcountry means taking risks. Why we do we do it? Tania Millen weighs in, as she explores the dark side of risk vs. reward, and nudges us in the right direction for finding balance.

As the world’s oceans fill up with plastic, the beaches along BC’s coast are quietly accumulating garbage. Talon Gillis's photos offers us a glimpse into a group of individuals working to protect and restore impacted habitat.

Opening day on the Skeena came late this year. Kitsumkalum fish monitors were there working with recreational anglers to gather data. Britta Boudreau takes us to the river, and gives us a glimpse of what’s at stake if the salmon stop swimming, and who is working to protect the resource.

Northern BC’s summers are often too short; however, August and September can bring some of the most interesting and fun kinds of fly-fishing: stalking the banks of low-water rivers for big, fat rainbows with large grasshopper patterns.

In the summer of 1971, men and machines were working on removing the overburden (mining lingo for “dirt”) on Noranda’s Bell Mine on the Newman Peninsula of Babine Lake when their work revealed a jumble of ancient, oversized bones.

The days are getting longer. The warmth of the sun is starting to break through the wall of winter. What will you do with the extra hours of light, the warmth, that sense of the world opening itself up to possibility?

If you go down to the Suskwa River where it passes through a tight canyon some four and a half kilometres above its confluence with the Bulkley, you will discover the remains of a very old bridge, an airy span built from nothing but telegraph wire and wood.

There are three common species of dragonfly nymphs found in BC lakes: the “climbers” or darners, which have long and tapered bodies; the “sprawlers,” who are short and squat in shape; and the “burrowers,” or Gomphus nymphs, which are so similar in size and shape to the sprawlers that a fly tier uses the same pattern to imitate them.

A boxy, renovated two-story fire lookout sticks up on a knob on the north side of Hankin Peak, with fine views of Rocky Ridge and the Kitseguecla River valley, as well as Ashman Ridge and Paleo Peak to the west.

My aunt almost married a North Coast fisherman. The romance between the pretty young teacher and the tall Norwegian fell casualty to family objections and World War II, but the story, like the jade-coloured glass fishing floats which sat in my grandmother’s kitchen window, did not fade away.

A slight breeze rustles the aspen leaves, and on it drifts the distinct scent of a northern summer. It could be a campfire or a Bar-B-Q, but when the days are long and when the salmon are running, the smell of smoke carries with it the flavour of curing fish and the promise of good eating throughout the winter.

The alpine ridge that I was introduced to as “Moonlight Mountain” is a spur of the larger Kispiox Mountain, an arm flung out first north and then northwest to enclose the headwaters of one of the tributaries of Moonlit Creek.

What does it feel like to stand in the middle of a slagheap? To climb around the innards of an old-but-not-forsaken dam? Or to pick your way across a falling-down power plant whose crumbling floors could swallow you with nary a burp?

Anyone who considers Canada a dull and uncultured country clearly hasn’t experienced the rich heritage of northern BC, where hundreds of First Nations communities provide the region with a history rooted several millennia into the earth and traditions that significantly pre-date European arrival on the continent.

The Crooked River, flowing north from its origins at Summit Lake 30 km from Prince George, is a secondary tributary of the Parsnip River system, which empties into the south end of Williston Lake Reservoir near Mackenzie Junction on Highway 97 North.

Folks in Tumbler Ridge aren’t strangers to uncertainty. Perhaps that’s why a delegation at the sixth International UNESCO Conference on Global Geoparks in Saint John, NB wasn’t going to celebrate until they heard the name they were waiting for: Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark.

When steelhead fly-fishers talk about rivers that are on their bucket lists, many come to mind; however, few rivers in the world are more revered for their dry-fly fishing opportunities than central BC’s Bulkley River.

“When you first see the lower Stikine, it’ll make you want to puke,” exclaimed a canoe guide friend when I told him our plans to spend 10 days paddling 240 kilometres of the lower Stikine River from Telegraph Creek to Wrangell, Alaska.